Then, sudden and brutal,
the weather front drops its pretence,
drapes us with white-out.

Hail stones beat and batter
any flesh exposed to its blows.
Visibility shrinks before our gaze.

This cold pierces Gortex layers,
stabs to the bones.
Cheeks redden from its flail.

Then, it is as if a hand
reaches down and lifts the scourge,
switches on the light.

There is a lane, pointing
in roughly the right direction.
On naked elders, birds start to celebrate.

We breathe new life
into stinging fingers,
raise bruised faces to the sun.

Hannah Stone has been widely anthologized and published on ezines and in The North, Dreamcatcher and other journals and collaborations. Solo publications include ‘Lodestone’ (Stairwell Books, York, 2016) and ‘Missing Miles’ (Indigo Dreams 2017). She collaborates with poets, composers and broadcasters. In other lives, she is a hillwalker, forager, singer and teacher.
Hannah’s new pamphlet, SŴN Y MORLOI ON PEN-CAER, is due in late spring 2019 from Maytree Press

As 2018 draws to a close, here at The Poetry Village we’d like to wish all our readers a happy and safe new year. Whilst we’re extremely proud of our project and what we’ve achieved over the last twelve months we’re also super excited about all the future projects that we have planned; not to mention all the amazing poems that have landed in our inbox and will be shared with our readers over the coming months.

Don’t forget that from February we will be publishing poems twice weekly. The launch of our Monday poems starts on the 4 February to help raise awareness of World Cancer Day with a moving collection of poems from Cameron Morse who is diagnosed with one of the most aggressive and malignant brain cancers.

Whilst we are proud to publish on-line, we appreciate that there are gaps in the market for traditional print and this is where our own imprint, Maytree Press begins its journey. We are delighted to reveal that both Maria Isakova-Bennett and Hannah Stone will be releasing new pamphlets with the press in Spring 2019. Look out for more details on our micro-site in the new year.

For now, thank you to everyone who has supported our project by sending your wonderful poetry, subscribing to the site and sharing the posts across the world. The statistics are truly amazing and to celebrate we’d like to share three of our most viewed poems with you again. Have fun and a wonderful creative New Year.

Mark Totterdel – Clod

Rolling away the clod reveals
a trinity of newts, curled like commas,
tiny heraldic beasts,
rhymes for the pale dead roots around them.

Last year, I chucked this hunk of earth
and made, by chance, their thin winter world.

May I set this against
my felling of the frogs’ safe groves of grass,
each careless wormchop, each act
of blue murder on the simple slugs?

Georgie Woodhead – Sunbridge Road

There are mothers stood arms-folded,
hard-buckled hands and tongues like blisters,
there are liver spots on the fat skin of their
calves when the wind flaps white dress around
their legs, dirty bedsheets on washing lines.

Men stood on the clumsy cobbles of alley ways,
he is swaying, facing the bricks that are slimy with
moss and the drip of black drainpipes, he turns
around and grins as he pulls up his zipper, finished
making steam against the dead weeds of concrete and stone.

A couple stood by the side of the road.
She is wearing a lilac that trips over the wind and ripples
around her knees, like the mother before her, she is leaning
up on her tip-toes as the bus screeches past, the reflection of her
red nails gripped around his shoulders, like blossom.

And he wheels his shopping trolley along crazy
paving like cracks in a broken heart, one wheel
always spinning out of control, a circus ride gone
wrong. Boxes of Shreddies, kitchen roll, dog food, five
six packs of beer, one sole flapping against the pavement
in a drumbeat like busking, he is stockpiling supplies he will never need

he is preparing for the downfall of this country that he will never get to see.

Roy Marshall – Seeing the Entomologist

He doesn’t know that a bee, drinking salt
from the pores on his wrist, is called
a Sweat Bee. Nor that a butterfly, fluttering by,
has memories of caterpillar life.

He rolls onto his stomach, shades his eyes,
says, ‘now you’re making it up.’ She laughs, her hair
a spill on the grass, counters,
‘google it if you like.’

He learns how a raft spider can submerge
for an hour, that Hawk moths have ears
on their mouths. She doesn’t know
that the lake remembers

every pebble you throw, and that
if a loved one dies, a body can fill
with grief, the way a water barrel
fills with sky.

Georgie Woodhead is a young writer from Sheffield who attends Hive’s Sheffield Young Writers. She was one of two highly commended young poets in the Cuckoo Northern Writers Award 2018. She was a winner of the Foyle Poetry Prize 2018 and came 2nd in the young people’s category of the Ledbury Poetry Competition 2018. Georgie has been published in Hive anthologies, halfway smile and wild poetry. She’s performed at various young writers’ events, and festivals including the Ted Hughes Poetry Festival 2018.

Roy Marshall’s first pamphlet Gopagilla (2012) received favourable reviews in the TLS and elsewhere. His first full collection The Sun Bathers was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Award, and a second collection The Great Animator (Shoestring Press) appeared in 2017. Previously a nurse, Roy now works in adult education.

He sets the day’s tone
as familiar locals go about
their daily business.
The brackish houses
focus on the sea,
waiting for the man of words
to arrive.
Reflections blossom on
the water’s experienced face,
as a whitewashed wall
borders a commune of windows.
Life here continues
with a natural sunlight
casting shadows
on snatched moments
impossible to ignore.

Byron Beynon’s work has appeared in several publications including Crannog, Cyphers, London Magazine, Planet, Poetry Wales, The Yellow Nib and the human rights anthology In Protest (University of London and Keats House Poets). Collections include Cuffs (Rack Press) and The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions).